[UPDATED] Umbra of Fate - v1.2 (8 Nov 2018)

Recommended Posts

Umbra of Fate is finally done and released (and updated)! The download links are at the bottom of this post.

Quick Overview:

Singleplayer only

GZDoom 3.4.x or higher and Doom2.wad

You must include brightmaps.pk3 and lights.pk3, both of which come with GZDoom

dmflags/dmflags2 are both expected to be set to 0

Mouselook is required. I also suggest binding Swim Up to a key (I personally used F during testing).

The hardware renderer is required, and the following must be enabled: dynamic lights, high resolution texture, and 3d models Enabling bloom is encouraged, but not necessary. Shadowmaps (gl_light_shadowmap) can be used as well, but there's some visual artifacts in some places with them enabled since it wasn't designed with them in mind.

No jumping/crouching

Additional mods are not supported . This include mods that may not seem like they would break it, like Beautiful Doom.

Designed for a widescreen resolution (16:9, 16:10, etc) of at least 1280x720

Make sure you enable music

Like my last mapset, Shadows of The Nightmare Realm, the premise is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The story takes place many years before Doom 1, and revolves around a man (NOT the Doomguy) who is on vacation and is out enjoying a day of hunting while his wife and infant son are at home. After a long and boring day, he starts walking back to his car, only to discover a ravine that wasn't there before. Feeling an unusually strong urge to find out what lurks beyond the ravine, he jumps down into it and heads out into the dark, foggy forest night. The rest of the story is told in the level itself through additional (skippable) text.

Umbra of Fate an experimental map, where I tried to push the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy to the limit rather than trying to include something for everyone. So expect an emphasis on dark, spooky areas; intense colored lighting; an emphasis on fights with a smaller number of tough enemies; a mix of Quake, Doom 64, and Doom 3 inspired map design; and interesting boss fights. It's also one giant level, conceptually split into four areas that are roughly equal to one level each.

Difficulty settings can be adjusted in the level itself right at the beginning.

v1.2 fixes an issue with the QWarp.fp shader that prevented Umbra of Fate from loading on newer GZDoom versions.

v1.1 Changes (6 August 2018)

v1.1 adds some new options for boss mechanics and performance tuning. The biggest change is that the bosses should now feel a lot less "chewy" and "grindy". Check out the Umbra of Fate Options menu for all the new options.

Full changelog for v1.1:

Spoiler

Added an options menu for UoF-specific stuff.

Added a "levels" post processing shader for fine tuning the final picture. Think of it like the Levels filter in Gimp or Photoshop. You can adjust this in the menu.

All water and lava textures replaced.

Added new liquid warping shader for lava and water that's based on Quake's liquid warping code

Area 2's boss now has (optional) new mechanics where he is less chewy. With the new mechanics, he will not go into a sub phase unless you do a minimum amount of damage. There is also a limit of three sub phases. The old mechanics are still available in the options menu.

Changed final boss arena so that there are no longer cages that open. Instead, there are now teleporters on the side of the pillars. This fixes the bug where cages weren't closing.

Reduced final boss's health a bit

The final boss's guardians can now take splash damage

The final boss's guardians have had their health slightly increased

The final boss has new (optional) mechanics. With the new mechanics, he will not go into a sub phase unless you do a minimum amount of damage. There is also a limit of three sub phases. The old mechanics are still available in the options menu.

Removed foggenerator.wad and replaced it with a customized ZScript version. This changes the look of most of the fog slightly.

Removed needless shader attached to the fog that probably impacted performance a bit

Added a menu option to hide all fog things in the map

Added a menu option to hide ground clutter in the map

Added a menu option to lessen or remove some of the messages that get printed during play

Added a menu option to enable debugging output

Reformatted bits of ACS and ZScript code here and there

Lava and water transparency (160 for lava, 180 for water) and scale should now be consistent across the map

Changed texture2D() to texture() in all shaders that used it (thanks _mental_)

Added CVars for all menu options.

ACS code now uses libalexa, an ACS library I recently started.

Changed a few Loop statements to Stop statements in ZScript because I was a derp

Added Doomsphere

Added a modified quad damage sound

Some ZScript source is now in separate files and in their own folder

Added some impassible lines in the cyberdemon boss's area, and moved the health spawn points slightly

Fixed a typo in one of the messages

* Yeah I know about the misaligned skull textures in the screenshots. Those were already fixed :-P

Share this post

Link to post

Umbra of Fate is finally done and released! The download links are at the bottom of this post.

Quick Overview:

Singleplayer only

This is for GZDoom 3.3.x or higher

This uses Doom2.wad for the IWAD

You must include brightmaps.pk3 and lights.pk3, both of which come with GZDoom

dmflags/dmflags2 are both expected to be set to 0

Mouselook is required. I also suggest binding Swim Up to a key (I personally used F during testing).

The hardware renderer is required. So dynamic lights, high resolution texture, and 3d models are required. Enabling bloom is encouraged, but not necessary. Shadowmaps (gl_light_shadowmap) can be used as well, but there's some visual artifacts in some places with them enabled since it wasn't designed with them in mind.

No jumping/crouching (these should already be disabled via MAPINFO anyway)

Additional mods are not supported

Designed for a widescreen resolution (16:9, 16:10, etc) of at least 1280x720

Like my last mapset, Shadows of The Nightmare Realm, the premise is inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The story takes place many years before Doom 1, and revolves around a man (NOT the Doomguy) who is on vacation and is out enjoying a day of hunting while his wife and infant son are at home. After a long and boring day, he starts walking back to his car, only to discover a ravine that wasn't there before. Feeling an unusually strong urge to find out what lurks beyond the ravine, he jumps down into it and heads out into the dark, foggy forest night. The rest of the story is told in the level itself through additional (skippable) text.

Umbra of Fate an experimental map, where I tried to push the type of gameplay that I personally enjoy to the limit rather than trying to include something for everyone. So expect an emphasis on dark, spooky areas; intense colored lighting; an emphasis on fights with a smaller number of tough enemies; a mix of Quake, Doom 64, and Doom 3 inspired map design; and interesting boss fights. It's also one giant level (12,000+ sectors), conceptually split into four areas that are roughly equal to one level each.

Difficulty settings can be adjusted in the level itself right at the beginning.

Share this post

Link to post

An atmospheric monster of a map with some nasty ambushes that are accentuated by the deadlier monsters. I recognised bits of Temple of Azeroth along the way when I wasn't running for my life. It's perhaps too reliant on using text messages to direct the player at times, but in the moments when I did feel a bit lost, I didn't stay lost for very long.

Share this post

Link to post

YukiRaven! I recently played your Shadows of the Nightmare Realm WAD and found it to be very cool! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish, because I couldn't figure out how to get the teleporters to rise on the final boss level. Could you fill me in? Also this WAD looks fantastic and I'll definitely be giving it a shot!

Share this post

Link to post

One bad thing I found so far: Pyrosuccubus basically oneshoots me up close, takes two SSG shots to die, and is really fast.

And with hard mode, there are 4 or 5 of them that spawn right around me without any way to escape.

The first thing to think of here is hiding in a defensive position quickly, but thing here is that when I tried hiding multiple times, they always killed me instead. So somehow only the most unobvious decision of ignoring them and running around wildly worked.

Not sure if it's THAT bad though, since overall it looks like this map is just actually being hard when I click "hard" :P

Share this post

Link to post

YukiRaven! I recently played your Shadows of the Nightmare Realm WAD and found it to be very cool! Unfortunately, I wasn't able to finish, because I couldn't figure out how to get the teleporters to rise on the final boss level. Could you fill me in? Also this WAD looks fantastic and I'll definitely be giving it a shot!

Share this post

Link to post

Ohhhh... I can't confirm it yet since I'm literally in bed, but I bet I have my HUD scaled up a bit. I usually try to leave stuff at default, but I must have forgotten about that. My bad! I'll keep that in mind for whatever I work on next (which will be Quake, not Doom).

I'm so glad to see such a positive response from everyone so far! If you haven't picked up on it yet, UoF is the prequel to SoTNR.

Share this post

Link to post

Intriguing! Would it be ok (narrative-wise, that's is) to play this then SoTNR? Could be a fun double feature, especially since SoTNR has been kicking around on my too-long to-play list for quite a while now.

Share this post

Link to post

Intriguing! Would it be ok (narrative-wise, that's is) to play this then SoTNR? Could be a fun double feature, especially since SoTNR has been kicking around on my too-long to-play list for quite a while now.